Why does Britain feel so poor?

Britain is a rich country with the world’s 6th largest economy and the highest tax income for decades, which raises a simple question - why do we seem so broke? Tom Calver, Data Editor at The Times, tackled the question last week. The big picture is pretty simple: we have a huge debt burden sucking over £100bn out of the budget every year (more than the entire education budget and nearly double the defence budget); and that would be okay-ish if the economy were growing, but it’s not. That creates what Calver calls, in the kind of obscure jargon popular among data nerds, “a uniquely shit set of circumstances for the government.” It also raises the next question: why aren’t we growing? The answer broadly comes down to two things. First, we have the lowest rate of investment (public and private) in the G7, with some trailing off since Brexit. There are many compelling examples of this, but a fun one was presented in a thread by Michael Dnes this week: it turns out that over two thirds o ... Read full article.